Hickory Creek

4:00 AM comes pretty early.  This is when my day began.  I got up and was soon on the road to “trail breakers” home in Akron where I picked him and “Trailhead” up.  We stopped for breakfast on the way and were at the trailhead shortly before the designated meeting time of 9:30.  Soon “Qi Wiz” pulled in with “kayakwoman” and “sbanner26”.  We all got ready while waiting for “Mr P”.

I expected the new trailhead parking to be closed/plowed in so I had informed “Qi Wiz” that I would be at Hearts Content.  I was surprised to find that new trailhead parking plowed.  In previous years it was not.  I had not informed “Mr P” that we were definitely to meet at Hearts Content, so once ready I zoomed down to the other parking lot and sure enough, there he was.  I let him know we were parking at Hearts Content.

We got on the trail almost exactly on time – 10:00 AM.  Upon studying the map, we decided to take a short cut to the trail by hiking through the edge of the campground and once at the end turning directly west.  We soon cut the trail, just like we had planned.  This cut a mile or more of hiking on Saturday. 

There were a total of seven on the trip (Trailhead, trail breaker, Qi Wiz, sbanner26, kayakwoman, Mr P, and yours truly, JonW) and six of us used snowshoes.  I don’t know if they helped or not, but I think they did.   When not under evergreens I would guesstimate that there were 8-10 inches of snow.   The person breaking trail had the hardest time and the last person had the easiest.

The hike went well.  We stopped 11:30ish for a break and then again around 1:00.  When we got to Coon Run, the crossing was far easier then I anticipated.  The water was very low so we were able to just walk across where the trail came to the stream.  The water did not even go over the top of my snowshoes.

When we got to Jacks Run, instead of crossing and then having to cross and re-cross the stream numerous times as you followed the trail, we stayed on the east side of the stream and followed the drainage until we came to the old RR grade just before the campsites.  This probably did not save time, as the streams were so low that crossing them was not a problem, but it was fun to go off-trail for a little bit.

We arrived at our campsite at 2:30 and had 3.5 hours of daylight to set up camp and gather firewood.  It was pretty obvious to me that there have not been many camping here this winter because there was a plethora of easily gathered downed wood within 100 feet of our camp.  As it turns out we gathered more wood then we needed to and left a nice pile for the next group that will arrive there.  We started the fire at 5:00 and soon had a nice blaze going.  (Thanks sbanner26 for the starter – it worked a treat)

We talked, ate, and sipped various beverages.  People began to drift to bed around 9:00 and all were there by 10:00.  Mr P got up in the middle of the night and replenished the fire.  He was also up first and was easily able, because of the coals, to get the fire going again.  It was very nice to have a fire to gather around in the morning as we had our breakfasts.

The coldest temperature that we noted was 21* when we got up.  This temperature was warmer than I had anticipated.

We packed up while letting the fire die down.   We piled snow on top of the remaining embers a little before 9:30 and then set off.  I had thought about following the Jacks Run drainage to its top and them cutting the trail a little north of there.   The snow covered the trail.  Because of the recent snowfall, there was no obvious old track in the snow.  The blazes are often poor.  Because of these factors we decided to just complete the loop by following the blazes, such as they are.

We actually had much less problems following the blazes then in previous trips here.  We did occasionally lose site of them, but never really got off track to speak of.  When the blazes would be lost, we would cast about and soon would be on our way again.

We got back to the vehicles at 1:30 and were soon on our way home.  Mr P headed back to his nearby home and the rest of us stopped at a restaurant in Franklin, PA for a much appreciated hot meal.

Good company, good times, thanks all from coming.

Those that were unable to come, you missed a great trip.

(I just got an trip log from kayakwoman with great pictures - I wish I could post that for all to enjoy)